A glance at HoI3

[Faeelin]

Not sure if I understand Johan. Is he saying that out of 200 random beta testers from the forum, only 20 remained after one week?

I kind of believe it actually. I will also say that I don't know how I feel about that; while it's too bad that the beta testers all bailed, it's the fault of the developers for pressing forward despite that.

[Habsburg]

200 to 20 seems reasonable.  Sad but reasonable.


Does three have an event for the Beyreuth Wagner festivales!!??! 


Those of us who hold East Asia dear to our hearts may need to help with work needed on China and East Asia from what I'm hearing.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Don't know enough about beta's to comment.  Ten percent would seem low to me if this were a business app.  But for a game with such a limited target audience I guess its not terrible. 

If I'm understanding that correctly then, they went ahead with only 20 beta testers?  The number of bugs reported doesn't sound that bad.

[Fate]

Paradox's development crew is clearly incompetent if they figured a random drawing would yield good results. They'd have better luck by assigning beta spots based on post count in descending order.

[ulmont]

Paradox's development crew is clearly incompetent if they figured a random drawing would yield good results. They'd have better luck by assigning beta spots based on post count in descending order.

A random drawing isn't bad, but then you need to start with like 2000 spots to allow your 10% number to be large enough to get reasonable results.

[Josephus]

Not sure if I understand Johan. Is he saying that out of 200 random beta testers from the forum, only 20 remained after one week?

Yes, that's what it looks like from here.

Well then they need to rework their criteria. I'm sorry, I must laugh. I tried to get into beta for EU2 and HOI 2. I was even turned down for Diplomacy, yet I was the only one who bought the fucking game.
I couldn't be arsed to ever apply for beta again.

So...that's their problem ,then.

[MadBurgerMaker]

I wonder if just making it open to anyone who is a registered forum user would work for the next game.

[Barrister]

Heh - I was a beta-tester for HOI 1, filed a half dozen bugs or so, and felt like I didn't really hold up my end of the bargain.

GUess I shouldn't have felt so bad...

[dps]

200 to 20 seems reasonable.  Sad but reasonable.

Yeah, I think if you get usable feed-back from 10% of the people or groups testing the game, that's actually pretty good.  It sounds bad if you haven't been involved in any product testing, but that's how things usually work out.  OTOH, that means you want as many testers as you can get to start with.  I don't see why they would turn down anyone who wanted to be a beta tester, unless it was someone that they knew from past experience wouldn't do jack, or someone that they had reason to feel wouldn't abide by the NDA.

[Josephus]

In true Paradox fashion they should give people who drop out from the Beta process, their own special icon on the forum.

[HisMajestyBOB]

The political and espionage system looks great, though I agree with Minsky/Joan/Keynes that bigger countries should accumulate threat faster than smaller ones. This would make the historical strategy of demonizing the USSR more effective for Germany.

I'll probably hold off on buying this one for a few months. I bought and enjoyed vanilla HoI2, but the AI was a little too weak in some areas, especially the Pacific and naval AI, for the game to be fully enjoyable. No desire or plans to ever buy any expansions or DLC for HoI3.

Hopefully a good AI mod will come out for this, like DAIM but taking advantage of the Lua. Once that happens, and I can catch it on sale, I'll probably pick it up.

[Viking]

Isn't bukkake legal?

Bukkake is a loophole in itself.

[Ideologue]

The political and espionage system looks great, though I agree with Minsky/Joan/Keynes that bigger countries should accumulate threat faster than smaller ones. This would make the historical strategy of demonizing the USSR more effective for Germany.

And Japan, for that matter.  Even if far as effectiveness goes that may have been more of a matter of internal propaganda--but anticommunism was an aggressively-pushed rationale for the war in China.

I'll probably hold off on buying this one for a few months. I bought and enjoyed vanilla HoI2, but the AI was a little too weak in some areas, especially the Pacific and naval AI, for the game to be fully enjoyable. No desire or plans to ever buy any expansions or DLC for HoI3.

I could see doing it in some possible universe, but it would depend strongly on what they added.

Hopefully a good AI mod will come out for this, like DAIM but taking advantage of the Lua. Once that happens, and I can catch it on sale, I'll probably pick it up.

[Bauer]

I'll wait until they fix the major game issues with expansion packs and buy them all at once in a discount bin in a few years.

EU3 was the last time Paradox will con me to buying one of their games on release.

[Habbaku]

Definitely waiting on the bargain bin for this one.  By then, the game will likely be patched to playability and several, entertaining mods will have been released.

One day, Paradox might give me a reason to buy at full-price, but the usual, sloppy releases are an indication that they want me to do nothing of the sort.